Saving Money with Managed IT Services: Cloud Services

Like many business owners, you’ve been struggling to figure out how to best leverage your assets to turn a profit for a long time now. But it’s not easy! The operating costs of running your business can be staggering, especially if you have employees working beneath you. And new solutions to old problems carry with them the danger of wasted money.

We know. We get it. And we have an idea for you: use a managed IT service like us to save money!

HOW DO MANAGED IT SERVICES SAVE YOU MONEY?

That’s the question we’re here to answer! But we’re going to break our answer to that question down in 5 different articles, with each one focusing on a different facet of what we bring to the table. Today, we’re going focus on cloud services.

4 WAYS MANAGED CLOUD SERVICES SAVE YOU MONEY

1. THEY JUST COST LESS

We’ll start with the basics. Operating in the cloud carries a substantially lower cost than traditional servers. If you are operating exclusively on your own servers, then you are not only paying for the power to run these servers, but also the cost of heating and cooling these servers, performing routine maintenance, and updating the software and licensing on those servers every few months. These are all costs that are completely eliminated by the cloud.

Using the cloud, instead, entails paying a flat monthly fee. This low ceiling on operating costs allows businesses of all sizes to stretch their budgets much farther than they would have been able to otherwise. Cloud services also give companies easy scalability, so they can adjust to the ebb and flow of business over the course of each year, without any additional time or money spent to accommodate it.

2. THEY LOWER YOUR RISK

If you’re not on the cloud, you’re vulnerable. Admit it: you get a little nervous every time somebody walks too close to your server with a cup of coffee in their hand, right?

Today, business and technology are inseparable. Losing your data is an often debilitating blow to businesses operating in this day and age. So what will you do if your server is compromised? Have you made a backup? Is your backup up-to-date? Can you operate without your data? Do you have a plan?

With the cloud, you don’t need a plan. The cloud IS the plan! The cloud is intrinsically more secure than your private server could ever be. Why? Because it’s constantly managed and monitored by teams of cyber security professionals. It will also help you create a secure, automated strategy for data backup. That way, in case of a system failure, hack, or disaster, you are guaranteed to have the most recent version of your data safe, and waiting for you.

3. THEY HELP YOU COLLABORATE MORE EFFICIENTLY

Together we stand, divided we fall.

Surely you’ve heard this phrase. It was originally coined by John Dickson, one of our Founding Fathers, and it is as true for a business today as it was for our budding nation in the 1700s. In order to run a successful business, you need a team with the ability to work together. Obviously it’s ideal for your team to simply communicate face-to-face, but with the dawn of the internet age, fewer and fewer businesses have the need or ability to do this. Remote work is where the world is going.

If you don’t have employees working remotely already, it’s in your future. You’re paying these employees for their work, which means that their time is your money. If you want to maximize profits, you need to give them the tools to work together as efficiently as possible. This means that the cloud is a ‘need,’ not a ‘want.’

4. THEY REDUCE GROWING PAINS

All businesses are subject to fluctuations. Like anything else, there are ‘ups’ and there are ‘downs’ that accompany running a business. The challenge is trying to predict these ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ so that adequate preparations can be made. If you over-prepare, you’re wasting resources. If you under-prepare, you won’t be able to meet demand, and that would be a huge missed opportunity. The accuracy of these predictions are extremely important, but even the pros get it wrong sometimes. What then?

With the cloud, it doesn’t matter if your predictions are right or wrong. If you go through a period of unexpected growth, you will be able to scale up quick enough to meet demand. If you go through a dry spell, you will be able to easily scale down your operation to maintain maximum efficiency. This kind of scalability is not possible if you’re working off of your own server, and that inflexibility routinely forces businesses around the country to make unnecessary expenditures. Flexibility will keep more money in your pocket!